Imagine you're a Seattle cyclist merrily commuting to work on your bike, a thermos of fair trade coffee in hand and a hemp messenger bag slung over your shoulder. You'd think you were Gaea's gift to environmentalism, right?

WRONG! You are a goddamned monstrous eco-villain! So says Rep. Ed Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on Washington State's House Transportation Committee, in a letter to a bicycle store owner:

"If I am not mistaken, a cyclist has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride."

This was Rep. Orcutt's explanation for why he'd be supporting a sales tax proposal that would require everyone who buys a bike for more than $500 to pay a $25 fee.

As long as we assume that every cyclist is eating a diet of pure petroleum (and motorists don't eat anything and never burn calories), Orcutt's argument makes sense, but doesn't go nearly far enough. Wait till he learns about running.

Ok there needs to be a law. If any elected official says something this stupid without it being intended as a joke, they're gone. Let's not forget, 1 gallon of gas releases 22lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere. 38 gallons is equivalent to what humans exhale on a yearly basis. 3 fill ups for my car is about enough to be equivalent to what I exhale yearly. This man is an idiot.

How do these people not have an anuerysm when they think of stuff like this? Heck, how come the general public doesn't have an immediate shutdown of all bodily functions upon realizing that these men were put into power by our fellow man.

On the politicians reasoning, you'd think he'd actually put some research into the subject. Come on, someone can't be this dishonest? Why?

Or the more logical explanation that he doesn't actually believe it so much as it's a loophope to get additional taxes in without his platform becoming 'raise taxes'. Because that's instant death for any politician in the US, but taxes reaaally need to go up. They've been at historical lows for a long time now, and it's not helping our being trillions in debt any.

Sounds more like a dig at science than a dig at bicyclists, actually. Oh, and a way to make money off of people he doesn't like, presumably while trying to reduce taxes on his donors (but for that latter part we'd have to look into his voting record some more).

Hell, I'd take that sort of fine if it also fined all other vehicles based on how much CO2 they emit (and it took to produce the actual thing). I'd also take it if it meant improved cycling lanes & more of them.

The Rookie Gamer:How do these people not have an anuerysm when they think of stuff like this? Heck, how come the general public doesn't have an immediate shutdown of all bodily functions upon realizing that these men were put into power by our fellow man.

On the politicians reasoning, you'd think he'd actually put some research into the subject. Come on, someone can't be this dishonest? Why?

We live in a world where reality has become a political subject to the point where stating a fact can get you scrutinised.

99.84% of peer reviewed articles say global warming is real and strongly suggest human activity plays a factor? NOPE! It's just them liberals trying to tax us and make us drive hippie cars!

We record how much CO2 we produce when cycling over 1 hour. We tax that. We then record how much a car produces and tax it proportionally compared to the bike CO2 level. Sure ill have to pay 5 dollars an hour or something. Car owners will be charged somewhere toward 50000 dollars an hour.

Imagine you're a Seattle cyclist merrily commuting to work on your bike, a thermos of fair trade coffee in hand and a hemp messenger bag slung over your shoulder. You'd think you were Gaea's gift to environmentalism, right?

WRONG! You are a goddamned monstrous eco-villain! So says Rep. Ed Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on Washington State's House Transportation Committee, in a letter to a bicycle store owner:

"If I am not mistaken, a cyclist has an increased heart rate and respiration. That means that the act of riding a bike results in greater emissions of carbon dioxide from the rider. Since CO2 is deemed to be a greenhouse gas and a pollutant, bicyclists are actually polluting when they ride."

This was Rep. Orcutt's explanation for why he'd be supporting a sales tax proposal that would require everyone who buys a bike for more than $500 to pay a $25 fee.

As long as we assume that every cyclist is eating a diet of pure petroleum (and motorists don't eat anything and never burn calories), Orcutt's argument makes sense, but doesn't go nearly far enough. Wait till he learns about running.

Ok there needs to be a law. If any elected official says something this stupid without it being intended as a joke, they're gone. Let's not forget, 1 gallon of gas releases 22lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere. 38 gallons is equivalent to what humans exhale on a yearly basis. 3 fill ups for my car is about enough to be equivalent to what I exhale yearly. This man is an idiot.

After all that hot air he just pumped out of his mouth he should be forced to put 5% of all his purchases back into the public treasury to make up for the CO2 he just made.

What a fucking moron.

Is his point really that "Well, if you make people polluting so much they make Captain Planet villain Looten Plunder shed a tear Native American style pay extra in taxes for their pollution then somebody making a purposeful life choice to limit pollution should pay a larger share of their purchase towards an anti-pollution tax?"

Because I guarantee you that carbon taxes don't make up 5% of a company's income.

I've not seen so much butthurt from a single politician since the last time I turned on the news.

We record how much CO2 we produce when cycling over 1 hour. We tax that. We then record how much a car produces and tax it proportionally compared to the bike CO2 level. Sure ill have to pay 5 dollars an hour or something. Car owners will be charged somewhere toward 50000 dollars an hour.

And then we tax heavy industry proportionally?

(Yeah, could have gone for a politicians and hot air gag, but really, that stopped being funny years ago)

The average cyclist will breathe about 48 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year while riding his bike for 30 minutes a day for 261 days a year on average, if we presume somebody that has a Monday through Friday work week. That's about 105 pounds.

Now this figure is a bit unfair, considering that said cyclist would be breathing almost all of this carbon dioxide out even if he was sitting in his Humvee doing jack shit, but let's consider that for some reason the minute he touches his bike he's somehow responsible for every ounce of air he's respiring.

Then the figure.. becomes still unfair when you consider that much of the carbon in somebody's lungs is largely recycled. Your lungs never really truly empty of air and you only actually metabolize about 5% of the oxygen you use, so a large portion of that carbon dioxide is breathed in, then breathed right back out, sometimes to be breathed right the fuck back in by yourself to sit in your lungs keeping them inflated for no other real reason than biology demands it.

You could extrapolate that if you're metabolizing 5% of the oxygen you breathe in and out then realistically you can only be metabolizing 5% of the carbon dioxide you're breathing out and the rest has to be recycled, cutting that 105 pounds a year down to 5 pounds, and again that's presuming that the minute you touch a bike you're suddenly responsible for all the carbon you breathe and that somebody in a Humvee expelling the same amount of carbon from their own nozzle isn't responsible for their own, but whatever.

Let's not be communists and presume that 1) you're responsible for all the air you breathe even if it's recycled and 2) you're responsible for your own air you breathe even though nobody else driving a car is.

An average bike will last you about 5 years of heavy use. Yes, you can take good care of it and it'll last a lot longer but we're not communists. Your bike is gone after 5 years, we're not saving money repairing it, we're not trading it in, shut up. You're spending 500 dollars on your bike (holy shit, what are you fucking Rockefeller? Whatever. You really goddamn love your bike, I guess) and paying a 5% sales tax (of $25) for the carbon you're 'putting out' to the tune of 525 pounds for 5 years, if we go by 'fuck you' math above and discount any of the extenuating circumstances.

Burning a gallon of gasoline creates about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. This isn't 'in addition to' your normal living respiration, this isn't 'recycled' carbon dioxide, this is 20 pounds of brand goddamn new carbon dioxide. You car doesn't inhale it's own carbon and fail to metabolize it and exhale it back and get it counted twice. This is brand new off the shelf pollution.

Cars on average put out 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. This isn't counting other shit like methane, nitrous oxide, hydro fluorocarbons, because we're trying to give cars a fair shot and math is hard. That translates into about 5.6 tons in American English which is about 12,000 pounds a year.

Over the lifetime of a car, which is estimated to be about 5 years because we're fucking stupid, that's about 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, which you may have noticed is slightly higher than the 525 pounds you've created with the bike.

525 pounds of carbon dioxide costs 25 dollars, which is roughly 21 pounds per dollar. 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide divided by 21 pounds per dollar accounts for 2,857 dollars per car. That's about 16% of a 17,000 dollar 'starter' car (again, you fuckers are Rockefeller because my starter car cost about what your bike did but whatever).

Hell, on my hand-me-down starter car that would be about 571% tax on my car. And it'd probably be more because my old car only barely passed state inspections, but whatever.

That almost sounds reasonable until you account for the fact that, again, the car owner should realistically be accountable for his own breathing, and that a closer total to what you actually metabolize driving your bike in carbon dioxide is closer to 26 pounds every 5 years.

So if you're spending 25 dollars to metabolize 26 pounds of carbon dioxide every 5 years (a 1 dollar and 4 cent value on your carbon per pound), then at that rate 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide would cost about 62,000 dollars per 5 years, or roughly 365% tax of the 'average' starting car (or a 12,400% increase over my starting car). Oh, and the car owners would have to pay an additional 25 dollar fee to make up for the fact that even if they're idling at a red light in their car they're still breathing.

(Yeah, could have gone for a politicians and hot air gag, but really, that stopped being funny years ago)

If we did, then things like the coal industry would things like several hundred percent of their incomes into taxes, no matter if we counted the pro-car way of 1 dollar for every 21 pounds, or the more realistic way of 1 dollar and 4 cents per pound of carbon.

Americans create about 27,000,000,000,000 of carbon in just coal power every 5 years. That's 27 trillion pounds. In the pro-car theory, that means we as a country would owe $257,142,857,142.86 in new taxes a year. 257 billion dollars. Just in coal. In the more realistic theory that would measure out to about 5,616,000,000,000 every year in new taxes. Or a 5 trillion dollar coal power tax. Per year.

And that's using some pretty lowballed estimates on American population, presuming there's about 300 million Americans, that I lowballed so the math would be easier. So that's about 15,500,000 people who's 9 tons of coal carbon a year are getting a free ride.

Damien Granz:The average cyclist will breathe about 48 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year while riding his bike for 30 minutes a day for 261 days a year on average, if we presume somebody that has a Monday through Friday work week. That's about 105 pounds.

Now this figure is a bit unfair, considering that said cyclist would be breathing almost all of this carbon dioxide out even if he was sitting in his Humvee doing jack shit, but let's consider that for some reason the minute he touches his bike he's somehow responsible for every ounce of air he's respiring.

Then the figure.. becomes still unfair when you consider that much of the carbon in somebody's lungs is largely recycled. Your lungs never really truly empty of air and you only actually metabolize about 5% of the oxygen you use, so a large portion of that carbon dioxide is breathed in, then breathed right back out, sometimes to be breathed right the fuck back in by yourself to sit in your lungs keeping them inflated for no other real reason than biology demands it.

You could extrapolate that if you're metabolizing 5% of the oxygen you breathe in and out then realistically you can only be metabolizing 5% of the carbon dioxide you're breathing out and the rest has to be recycled, cutting that 105 pounds a year down to 5 pounds, and again that's presuming that the minute you touch a bike you're suddenly responsible for all the carbon you breathe and that somebody in a Humvee expelling the same amount of carbon from their own nozzle isn't responsible for their own, but whatever.

Let's not be communists and presume that 1) you're responsible for all the air you breathe even if it's recycled and 2) you're responsible for your own air you breathe even though nobody else driving a car is.

An average bike will last you about 5 years of heavy use. Yes, you can take good care of it and it'll last a lot longer but we're not communists. Your bike is gone after 5 years, we're not saving money repairing it, we're not trading it in, shut up. You're spending 500 dollars on your bike (holy shit, what are you fucking Rockefeller? Whatever. You really goddamn love your bike, I guess) and paying a 5% sales tax (of $25) for the carbon you're 'putting out' to the tune of 525 pounds for 5 years, if we go by 'fuck you' math above and discount any of the extenuating circumstances.

Burning a gallon of gasoline creates about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. This isn't 'in addition to' your normal living respiration, this isn't 'recycled' carbon dioxide, this is 20 pounds of brand goddamn new carbon dioxide. You car doesn't inhale it's own carbon and fail to metabolize it and exhale it back and get it counted twice. This is brand new off the shelf pollution.

Cars on average put out 5.1 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. This isn't counting other shit like methane, nitrous oxide, hydro fluorocarbons, because we're trying to give cars a fair shot and math is hard. That translates into about 5.6 tons in American English which is about 12,000 pounds a year.

Over the lifetime of a car, which is estimated to be about 5 years because we're fucking stupid, that's about 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, which you may have noticed is slightly higher than the 525 pounds you've created with the bike.

525 pounds of carbon dioxide costs 25 dollars, which is roughly 21 pounds per dollar. 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide divided by 21 pounds per dollar accounts for 2,857 dollars per car. That's about 16% of a 17,000 dollar 'starter' car (again, you fuckers are Rockefeller because my starter car cost about what your bike did but whatever).

Hell, on my hand-me-down starter car that would be about 571% tax on my car. And it'd probably be more because my old car only barely passed state inspections, but whatever.

That almost sounds reasonable until you account for the fact that, again, the car owner should realistically be accountable for his own breathing, and that a closer total to what you actually metabolize driving your bike in carbon dioxide is closer to 26 pounds every 5 years.

So if you're spending 25 dollars to metabolize 26 pounds of carbon dioxide every 5 years (a 1 dollar and 4 cent value on your carbon per pound), then at that rate 60,000 pounds of carbon dioxide would cost about 62,000 dollars per 5 years, or roughly 365% tax of the 'average' starting car (or a 12,400% increase over my starting car). Oh, and the car owners would have to pay an additional 25 dollar fee to make up for the fact that even if they're idling at a red light in their car they're still breathing.

(Yeah, could have gone for a politicians and hot air gag, but really, that stopped being funny years ago)

If we did, then things like the coal industry would things like several hundred percent of their incomes into taxes, no matter if we counted the pro-car way of 1 dollar for every 21 pounds, or the more realistic way of 1 dollar and 4 cents per pound of carbon.

Americans create about 27,000,000,000,000 of carbon in just coal power every 5 years. That's 27 trillion pounds. In the pro-car theory, that means we as a country would owe $257,142,857,142.86 in new taxes a year. 257 billion dollars. Just in coal. In the more realistic theory that would measure out to about 5,616,000,000,000 every year in new taxes. Or a 5 trillion dollar coal power tax. Per year.

And that's using some pretty lowballed estimates on American population, presuming there's about 300 million Americans, that I lowballed so the math would be easier. So that's about 15,500,000 people who's 9 tons of coal carbon a year are getting a free ride.

We'd be able to get a health care system that actually works, pay off our national debt, repave the roads, revamp the educational system, and improve the law enforcement side of things in just a couple of years at that rate.

We'd be able to get a health care system that actually works, pay off our national debt, repave the roads, revamp the educational system, and improve the law enforcement side of things in just a couple of years at that rate.

I say go for it. An extra $3k per year is barely anything.

Except it would also make your power bill go from $95 a month to $1,483 a month, on average. And you know goddamn well there's no way the rich would pay a cent in these new taxes, so that 'average' cost would be put on people making 6-20 thousand a year, making their electric bill cost more than their rent.

Shit, their electric bill would cost more than about 50% of the country make period.

An extra 3,000 might not be 'barely anything', but an extra $20,796 is hardly anything but.

The median per capita amount a worker is expected to make in America is actually $26,000 dollars. 20 thousand dollars in taxes is not 'barely anything' to them, and honestly neither is 3,000.

That's 17 thousand dollars per person, too, as my estimates for 5 trillion dollars in extra taxes per year on electricity were done not by household but by per person, as I based it on carbon footprint per person in America, not by household. My figures didn't give a fuck if somebody was elderly or a child either. If I counted children and the elderly then the amount per person would skyrocket way up.

For a family of 4 that's 68,000 dollar tax increase per year. With a household income of 52,000 dollars with a full time working mother and father and 2 kids, they would still owe the government 16 thousand dollars a year if they did nothing but give all their money to the government and lived off of nothing but the well wishes of their fellow man.

(Yeah, could have gone for a politicians and hot air gag, but really, that stopped being funny years ago)

If we did, then things like the coal industry would things like several hundred percent of their incomes into taxes, no matter if we counted the pro-car way of 1 dollar for every 21 pounds, or the more realistic way of 1 dollar and 4 cents per pound of carbon.

Americans create about 27,000,000,000,000 of carbon in just coal power every 5 years. That's 27 trillion pounds. In the pro-car theory, that means we as a country would owe $257,142,857,142.86 in new taxes a year. 257 billion dollars. Just in coal. In the more realistic theory that would measure out to about 5,616,000,000,000 every year in new taxes. Or a 5 trillion dollar coal power tax. Per year.

And that's using some pretty lowballed estimates on American population, presuming there's about 300 million Americans, that I lowballed so the math would be easier. So that's about 15,500,000 people who's 9 tons of coal carbon a year are getting a free ride.

True, I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, merely as a logical next step.

(Yeah, could have gone for a politicians and hot air gag, but really, that stopped being funny years ago)

If we did, then things like the coal industry would things like several hundred percent of their incomes into taxes, no matter if we counted the pro-car way of 1 dollar for every 21 pounds, or the more realistic way of 1 dollar and 4 cents per pound of carbon.

Americans create about 27,000,000,000,000 of carbon in just coal power every 5 years. That's 27 trillion pounds. In the pro-car theory, that means we as a country would owe $257,142,857,142.86 in new taxes a year. 257 billion dollars. Just in coal. In the more realistic theory that would measure out to about 5,616,000,000,000 every year in new taxes. Or a 5 trillion dollar coal power tax. Per year.

And that's using some pretty lowballed estimates on American population, presuming there's about 300 million Americans, that I lowballed so the math would be easier. So that's about 15,500,000 people who's 9 tons of coal carbon a year are getting a free ride.

True, I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, merely as a logical next step.

I wasn't suggesting you did. I figured that you were being sarcastic. I was pointing out just how monstrously stupid Orcutt's idea was if you took it to its logical conclusion.

I wasn't being serious either, or I wouldn't make fun of the rhetorical 'average reader's' ability to spend 500 dollars every 5 years on a bike.

If we did, then things like the coal industry would things like several hundred percent of their incomes into taxes, no matter if we counted the pro-car way of 1 dollar for every 21 pounds, or the more realistic way of 1 dollar and 4 cents per pound of carbon.

Americans create about 27,000,000,000,000 of carbon in just coal power every 5 years. That's 27 trillion pounds. In the pro-car theory, that means we as a country would owe $257,142,857,142.86 in new taxes a year. 257 billion dollars. Just in coal. In the more realistic theory that would measure out to about 5,616,000,000,000 every year in new taxes. Or a 5 trillion dollar coal power tax. Per year.

And that's using some pretty lowballed estimates on American population, presuming there's about 300 million Americans, that I lowballed so the math would be easier. So that's about 15,500,000 people who's 9 tons of coal carbon a year are getting a free ride.

True, I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, merely as a logical next step.

I wasn't suggesting you did. I figured that you were being sarcastic. I was pointing out just how monstrously stupid Orcutt's idea was if you took it to its logical conclusion.

True, I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, merely as a logical next step.

I wasn't suggesting you did. I figured that you were being sarcastic. I was pointing out just how monstrously stupid Orcutt's idea was if you took it to its logical conclusion.

Ah, ok, fair enough, misunderstood you there.

I'm sorry if the misunderstanding made me think I was talking down to you, when I was mostly addressing Orcutt's bad idea. Orcutt's true motivation, obviously in his really fucking terrible argument and idea isn't a feasible way to curb pollution but a really ham fisted dumb ass false equivalency.

Orcutt isn't trying to get us to stop pollution he's trying to convince us that biker riders are 'just as bad' as people who drive 300 feet down the road in a sport utility vehicle then idle it in the parking lot with their kid inside while they do 2 hours of shopping.

It's the political equivalent of a 10 year old child having a shit fit because his 19 year old brother can stay up later than 9:30 at night.

Somewhere in Orcutt's diseased mind he sees himself as some sort of protector of injustices Looten Plunder faces at the hands of Captain Planet who has thought he's found some sort of loop hole in the anti-pollution argument that only works if you have absolutely no fucking sense of scale.

It's like people arguing against adoption of hybrid vehicles because they 'only' reduce emissions by 50%, as if the goal of environmentalism was to reduce pollution to 0 today or do jack shit, because in Orcutt's mind 60 thousand pounds of carbon and 525 pounds of carbon might as well be the same thing, and if you're not removing those last 500 pounds of carbon dioxide you might as well not even remove any.

We can find 10,000 solutions to lower carbon emissions to like 10%, but to Orcutt we might as well not do any of them because none of them single-handedly make the world fart rainbows and candy for all.

Again, only a child or somebody having a temper tantrum really thinks this way, but welcome to the motherfucking Washington State Republican party!

Frission:That's just plain stupid. Is he making fun of environmentalists or something?

Again, my wager is yes. He's basically under the impression that cyclists are 'just as bad' for the environment than a car, therefor he wants to punish cyclists, to prove his point, like "Ah hah, if you tax gasoline or coal because of carbon, you should tax people who own house pets!" because he has absolutely no fucking sense of scale.

Damien Granz:Somewhere in Orcutt's diseased mind he sees himself as some sort of protector of injustices Looten Plunder faces at the hands of Captain Planet who has thought he's found some sort of loop hole in the anti-pollution argument that only works if you have absolutely no fucking sense of scale.

It's like people arguing against adoption of hybrid vehicles because they 'only' reduce emissions by 50%, as if the goal of environmentalism was to reduce pollution to 0 today or do jack shit, because in Orcutt's mind 60 thousand pounds of carbon and 525 pounds of carbon might as well be the same thing, and if you're not removing those last 500 pounds of carbon dioxide you might as well not even remove any.

We can find 10,000 solutions to lower carbon emissions to like 10%, but to Orcutt we might as well not do any of them because none of them single-handedly make the world fart rainbows and candy for all.

Again, only a child or somebody having a temper tantrum really thinks this way, but welcome to the motherfucking Washington State Republican party!

Quite possibly...we've got plenty of people like that running the Australian Greens party. Fortunately almost nobody votes for them, though, but they still have more power than I'd like.

I'm not sure if that's what he's going for, though, there could be any number of reasons to make a stupid decision (wanting to get rid of bikers, backhanded tax increase, support other industries by getting people off bikes, or just a stupid attempt at lipservice to environmentalism), but I've not been watching him at all closely.

Oh hey, you all didn't make the two clicks to get an explanation did you? Well then, I will now explain why a blog on Comedy Central may not be a valid source. The guy is actually supporting a part of a bill put forward by Washington Democrats to build roads. The majority of his argument is that since bycyclists also use the roads, they should be taxed for them in the same way motorists are through fuel taxes. It was also a private e-mail to a bike shop owner. That part in specific was not an argument in and of itself, but a counter argument to the claim that since Bikes are Eco-friendly, they should not have to be taxed to pay for roads. It is a bad argument, but it is hardly the insanity you are all accusing the man of.

The e-mailPHA+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly9pbWFnZXMuYmltZWRpYS5uZXQvaW1hZ2VzL2VtYWlsT3JjdXR0LkpQRyIgYWx0PSJpbWFnZSIvPjwvcD4=

Edit- It appears to be a reply, but we are not able to see the e-mail it was a reply to. I'm going to assume that he was replying to the bicycle shop owner mentioned in the article who is probably against the tax.

Thank goodness. I still think his argument is idiotic and I disagree with him, but instead of being pure stupidity, the phrase was taken out of context and was just a bad reply to an argument.

Thank you for the research.

I also disagree, at least with that part. The gas tax is fundamentally about road usage, and there is no comparative tax on bikes right now. There are a lot of bicyclists in Washington, and a lot of bike paths. It does make sense to tax them for that. However, bikes are definitely not a significant source of pollution, but considering that is not what his argument or the tax are really about, that is ultimately irrelevant.

Interesting argument, but if you did that, you'd have to understand that bicyclists are many many times more efficient with their energy than a person on foot. You can easily bike 10-15 mph with the same effort as walking 3-4 mph. Your respiration rate is directly proportional to the amount of energy being expended, so over one mile a walking pedestrian will produce about three times as much Carbon Dioxide as the bicyclist.

Data from Wikipedia, however lacking in citations, show these figures for energy efficiency.

1.62 kJ/(km∙kg) or 0.28 kcal/(mi∙lb) for cycling,3.78 kJ/(km∙kg) or 0.653 kcal/(mi∙lb) for walking/running,16.96 kJ/(km∙kg) or 2.93 kcal/(mi∙lb) for swimming.

Is silly law. Just say you're taxing cyclists because there's a lot of them and you can't let them get away with living cheaply :P